BDSM: Fifty Shades of Grey Unplugged

With the recent buzz being created by EL James' book "Fifty Shades of Grey," I felt compelled to discuss the elements of the relationship described in the book as well as dispel myths that have recently come up in the media regarding BDSM type relationships. The definition of BDSM describes a relationship in which people take on a role of Dominant or a Submissive and may involve some type of restriction (Bondage) and the setting of rules by the Dom which if not followed properly by the Submissive he/she will be punished through some sort of discipline. People who participate in BDSM come from a variety of ethnicities, sexual orientations, ages and social classes

The Dom is in a position of power and authority and the Sub is in a position of helplessness and vulnerability in many capacities. These relationships are consensual and the submissive has code words to let the Dom know if he/she has had enough. Therefore, the myth that the Sub is actually being abused and in danger of being hurt is not true at all in a true D/S relationship because the Submissive has all the power to stop a ‘scene' by using the code word. The draw for people involved in the BDSM scene is multi-layered and varied but coincide with the desire to experience a non-Vanilla type of sensual, sexual erotic experience that occurs outside of the normal rational mind. When Ana first experiences this type of experience she is surprised by her erotic response which is immediate and highly charged despite her intellectual mind telling her she shouldn't be getting turned on.

Many people when they first hear about Bondage-Discipline and Sadomasochistic relationships think that there must be something pathologically wrong with the person(s) administering or receiving the pain, humiliation or restrictions which can be involved in this type of dynamic. However, couples involved in this type of relationship only come in for therapy when there are issues outside their sexual relationship that need help, or because one of them is not adhering to the detailed contract which was set up at the beginning of their relationship. Like the heroine Anastasia in Fifty Shades of Grey, she is asked to read over a list of activities to see which are hard limits (meaning activities she would never want to do under any circumstances) and soft limits (meaning activities that she might consider trying) and sign a contract.

People in this type of relationship describe it at times as an orientation the way other people might say they're gay or Lesbian in that they need certain threats or actions of pain or restrictions to make them feel turned on erotically. Many people do not want or give pain but rather another type of sensation that can cause the partners to get a type of "high" that other people might get finishing an Iron Man. It can put people in a type of trance-like state that lifts them out of their ordinary experience. For many people the actual act of intercourse or touching one another is not part of the experience and yet one or both partners are brought to orgasm through the anticipation, rule setting and/or restrictions put into place. One of my clients who was involved in this type of relationship acted as a Dom and her male partner was not allowed to touch her in any way except perhaps to stroke her boots as she set up restrictions for him.

In the press recently, it has been suggested that the book is reflecting a change in society somehow and that because women have broken the ‘glass ceiling' in their careers they are more likely longing for a place in which they can relinquish control. I would argue that these types of relationships have been around a long time and that the gender of the Dom and sub has been inhabited by both sexes. The most famous example of a man taking on the masochist role might be in the novella Venus in Furs written by Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch in 1879 was based on his own experiences as a sub to his mistress Baroness Fanny Pistor. In this relationship he begged to be treated as a slave and that she wears fur while subjugating him. The term Masochism was named for him by the Austrian psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing in 1886 due to Sacher-Mosoch's writings on the subject. A modern interpretation of this novel entitled Venus in Fur by David Ives is being performed currently on Broadway in fact which illustrates the longevity of the erotic power the D/S dynamic.

The subject of this book should not be viewed through a socio-political lens since it lies in a realm that is beyond in a psychological, emotional and sensual world. It is an adult form of play that many people would rather just keep in their fantasies. Therefore, just because the book has become a hit in the suburbs, does not mean that all these female readers want to enact these roles. Some may and some may not, but you have to open up the topic with yourself and your partner in order to find out what you might want to try.

As I say to male clients sitting in my consulting office, the fantasy of being so irresistible to a man that he cannot control his desire is the ultimate libido cocktail for most women. This involves creative pursuing by one partner in order to build anticipation and psychological engagement. There is in fact a multi-billion dollar industry of romance novels that are filled with bad boy heroes and desired heroines that succumb to the alpha-type hero. Just as men watch their porn online, there are many women who go to websites in which laypeople share their erotica stories for others to read. A portion of these stories contain stories of BDSM. It is not weird, it is not pathological, it is a flavor of erotica, just as chocolate (and vanilla) are flavors of ice cream.

I can speak only for my slave and myself. As her master I control her when she is at home. I make the rules she follows them. If not she is punished. She must wear her collar and leash at all times when home regardless of who comes over.Now having said all that As her Master I have but one thought on my mind. How can I please her. ever rule every punishment every reward is for her. We both met coming out of ltr with normal sex lives. We stumbled into this discussing how pain feel good at times. We have no contract per-say. While we work on thing one goal is to get to the point of being militant proud of who she is. Being able for us to go out in public with her silk collar on and be proud of it. With her saying "THIS IS WHO I AM" My job as he master is lead her into true freedom and empower her to be proud hat she a slave/sub.

It makes me truly sorry to read comments such as yours, to think that there are people like you who are stuck in closeminded ingnorance.

BDSM, Dominance, Submission and Sadomasochistic relationships exist and are very real to a large community of people. if you think that it is fantasy, i encourage you to pay a visit to CollarMe or Fetlife.com or any number of websites where people who engage in the lifestyle congregate. Hopefully, you will come to realize that not only are these relationships legitimate, but that they contain the potential of a level of experience that you, in your horribly mundane life, can only imagine.

i remind you that the type of relationship that you abhor are CONSENSUAL, MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL and ultimately, have fewer problems and are more successful than a vast majority of vanilla relationships. EVERYTHING in a well-structured D/s relationship is based on consensual agreement, mutual love, and a great deal of trust. The pieces of those relationships that so called society has to clean up are a majority of vastly happy people engaging in practices that make them, and others around them, very happy. i cannot fathom what "damage" can come from that.

speaking as a slave in a consensual 24/7 TPE M/s relationship, i can personally attest that D/s has been one of the greatest adventures and aspects of growth that i've experienced in my own life, and i feel sorry for you who seems to have no capacity to understand what a beautiful thing D/s and BDSM can be.

I can speak only for my slave and myself. As her master I control her when she is at home. I make the rules she follows them. If not she is punished. She must wear her collar and leash at all times when home regardless of who comes over.Now having said all that As her Master I have but one thought on my mind. How can I please her. ever rule every punishment every reward is for her. We both met coming out of ltr with normal sex lives. We stumbled into this discussing how pain feel good at times. We have no contract per-say. While we work on thing one goal is to get to the point of being militant proud of who she is. Being able for us to go out in public with her silk collar on and be proud of it. With her saying "THIS IS WHO I AM" My job as he master is lead her into true freedom and empower her to be proud hat she a slave/sub.

Hi there, I have stumbled across this web-site, while looking into various aspects of BDSM. I am a novice in this field, so every bit of information that I can get my hands on is good news. There is a wealth of information on another web-site that I have found, which is:
www.bondageandbdsm.org

They have all sorts of stories and diaries on there, and a free guide that you can download on their home page; for anyone else just dipping a toe into the waters, I can highly recommend that site.......WELL WORTH A VISIT!!

I've experienced both subspace and dissociation and they are total opposites! Subspace puts you in a very connected state of consciousness, gives you an incredible high and the ability to focus entirely on what is happening, albeit in a blissed-out state. With dissociation you forget, you detach rather than connect. The only way for you to understand what subspace is is to actually try it.

The sad thing I've found, is so few men as Doms / Tops actually have the capability to delve into the female sub / bottom's mind. These experiences require 100% trust in partner knowing that they will do all that needs done for the desired result.

I find there are many poser Dom's who only know how to service their own needs.

I think I'd feel better about this novel if a] it didn't read as if written by a giggling 11 year old girl and b] if it portrayed the BDSM community correctly. As-is, the novel is very BDSM-negative, suggesting it's a disease that can be cured, and the scene is populated by screwed up degenerates.

Just wished Ms. Cooper would explain that this adult alternative sexual lifestyle is viewed by the vast majority of mental health professionals to originate from childhood abuse trauma. I've been advised to enjoy it safely in the BDSM community, and learn and advocate the banning of all U.S. child corporal punishment. I'd wish she'd offer the same as a side not to this topic. As for myself, my BSSM shade is so grey the community hasn't offered me one player I feel happy with, myself age played a single digited aged boy in age play with a maternal mom who mets out spankings. So even in the world of BDSM living with the residual damage from child abuse, where I recall forcibly being undress from the waist down, and having my genitals exposed to my mother, as part of a ritual spanking, not knowing I was being sexually aroused for my very young age, I can't believe we can't agree that the adult coping mechanism of BDSM isn't the long term solution to the sexual paraphilia problem, the parenting culture that denies they don't sexually abuse their children with psychosexual damage when they use corporal punishement is the problem and mental health professionals that don't use their professional "voice" often enough to speak against it are the problem, but then that might limit clients with sadomasochist desires later in life!

Seriously can't believe you compared the "high" of an Iron Man to BDSM. I mean really? Throughout the years, I've found myself in initimate friendships with a significant number of people (men and women) who engage in S&M and group sex. I don't judge them. I love most them, in fact. But the reality is that they themselves view the behavior as needing "cured". I've sat through crying sessions and what's wrong with me? I just want to be "normal". In EVERY case, they suffered childhood abuse - sexual predation, alcoholism, drugs. Most of the sexual abuse was perpetrated by a parent, not a stranger! So much of what I've read recently is that old-fashioned sex is vanilla (aka boring) and BDSM is like chocolate or rocky road (yummy sex!!) Let's all just go out and try 32 flavors and see what we like best. Talk to some people who weren't abused as children. See if they, too, feel compelled to go outside the "established" sexual norms because they can't feel loved unless they feel fear, they can't feel love unless there is "abuse" of some form. That BDSM is just a flavor of ice cream, is a real misrepresentation and it's coming from the professionals who should be helping these people who are really, really hurting.

You know some of them, and it's unfortunate that they experienced abuse as a child. And yet, a significant proportion of the population has experienced childhood abuse; is it therefore surprising that members of an alternative sexual lifestyle have as well? I know a lot of people in the lifestyle, and neither I nor any of my partners were abused. We came to find this on our own. The "what is wrong with me" breakdown is a common phase, not because BDSM is a sickness of which we need to be cured, but because we have been inundated by negative societal viewpoints from the time we even learned what it was. If you've been told since the start of your psychosexual development "what you like is wrong, you are a pervert, you are sick", of course you're not going to want to like what you like! However, as I think most of us have found, there isn't much choice involved. Sure, we CAN have vanilla relationships, and many of us do. That being said, most of us aren't as happy as we can be in them; we need the added component that BDSM provides. It's not just a different flavor of ice cream, it's adding everything that makes ice cream delicious: deeper understanding, trust, and complete openness in a relationship.

Not all BDSM lifestylers will believe they were abused, and indeed some creations of these various fetishes can form from secondary experiences of seeing abuse, so it's understandable to have many who find their BDSM fetishes unable to know the source of it came from abuse as a child. Also to accept these various paraphilias as comming from abuse means vanillas can label it variant and wrong and that would not be acceptable so the denial must continue. As I said I'm OK with mutual consenting BDSM activity, but the denial of it sourcing from an abuse experience means the victim is forced completely unbiden to be distracted in their life with this need/preoccupation whether they enjoy it or not. Since the collective wisdom of the mental health community is to dismiss sadomasochism as a mental illness unless it's significanty disrupting their life in some meaningful way to function normally for more than six months its' very convenient to embrace BDSM and call it a normal activity so one is not considered to have a mental illness. Why the mental health community refuses to openly challenge the general public about forms of child abuse that damage specifically the childs sexuality beyond overt pedophelia is a mystry. Why not go after the source of much sexual paraphilia, ignorant forms of sexual abuse in children, and some covert ones being inflicted by parents who don't even recognize that their own fetishes are motivating some of them to abuse their own children?

Dear Aimee,
I'm so sorry to hear of your friends' experience of abuse as a child. However, in science there have been no studies that show a causal link between physical and/or sexual abuse as a child with the development of a sexual preference for domination and submission on a significant amount of people. While I believe there are people who did suffer and do engage in these activities, it is not recognized as a reason people like to be dominated.
It is also dangerous to view people with this preference as abnormal. Some of the folks who do come in for help is because they feel like they would like a wider repetoire of sexual behaviors and not be so rigidly fixed to their particular fetish or kink. But that is a far cry from needing to be "cured", it is more like creating a bigger lovemap menu to choose from.
I have treated many clients who have had abuse in their histories, whether it was at the hands of parents, lovers, or strangers and the trauma they have suffered. Their healing journey is an honor to lead and witness by me, their therapist. While the abuse affects every aspect of their lives, including their sexuality, it is not an automatic precursor to a BDSM lifestyle.

Submitted by Sexually abused and told I wasn't on May 8, 2012 - 11:51pm

A specific desire to be spanked or spank that provides sexual gratification is not a domination or submissive theme desire? Few studies have been done in science looking for evidence between child corporal punishment and sadomasochism, most of the evidence resides in clinical practice, most fetishes are never revealed to professional psychological practitioners. Again I have no quarel with the BDSM community, I find it disappointing but not surprising that a licensed practitioner of a lower educational degree, L.C.S.W. has not consulted her more vigorously educated peers on the subject. My own experience agrees with here with commenter Aimee, " In EVERY case, they suffered childhood abuse - sexual predation, alcoholism, drugs. Most of the sexual abuse was perpetrated by a parent, not a stranger! This has been my experience also, and I have shared two stories where the fetish was involve in some way with children being abused. I have met too many mothers in the early online days of cyber space, some in denial, some honest in admitting sexual arousal from spanking, those in denial swear the adult activity has no relation to spanking their child, those who see this desire as an unwanted afliction see the abuse connection and being aroused by seeing a child spanked would NEVER dream of spanking a child. As for scientific studies I wonder why the denial here Ms Cooper? Are you going to attempt to separate out a spanking fetish and the emotion of domination and submissiveness to assure readers here that child abuse has not proven to lead to a need for domination or submission as an adult BDSM activity? I can tell you I've been around enough adults just into spanking either with a male being dominated by a female in a committed relationship with the common use of spanking,paddling as the defining physical activity for relational control under guidelines of poor behavior to initiat it. And it has been very common for women to desire men to dominate them in a marriage relationship called, "Taken in Hand" where the husband uses spanking and paddling when the wife behaves inappropriatly with agreed upon rules! I've shared in early online cyber days chat sessions where I meet such couples, and in almost all of them their children were being spanked by them! It's convenient to separate a spanking fetish from a BDSM term, domination and submission, but guess what, the element of those emotional desires is present in a parent spanking their child! As for being honest about science, studies have been done and I'll share this article annoucing the results of a study. Agreed it's not linking sadomasochism to child spanking, but it's finding is that indeed spanking a child does expose them to developing a masochistic fetish with spanking. And in the context of that traumatic humiliating experience for a child where a parent forcefully, ritually undresses them or partially so, with full genital exposure sexual abuse happens and sexual sensations happen, for both parties, one of them doens't understand the experience, while the other may if they have a spanking fetish, is denying it! Here's one science bit of real proof, Review found physical punishment of kids linked to unprotected, masochistic sex as adults

"This adds one more harmful side effect to spanking," said Murray Straus, a spanking expert who was expected to present the findings of four studies at the American Psychological Association's Summit on Violence and Abuse in Relationships in Bethesda, Md., on Thursday.

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"I think that it's pretty powerful," said Elizabeth Gershoff, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's School of Social Work. "It's across several studies and across different forms of either risky or deviant sexual behavior."

Straus, who was the author of all four studies, hopes the findings will raise awareness among child development experts.

"My hope is to convince my colleagues that they ought to put this in their textbooks," said Straus, co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham. "It's amazing. Something experienced by all American kids gets an average of half a page in child development textbooks, and not a single one comes to the conclusion that parents should never spank."

Even the revered Dr. Spock, who was anti-spanking, never came right out and advised parents outright not to do it, he added. Instead, Spock advised "avoiding it if you can."

A meta-analysis of spanking studies conducted by Gershoff found 93 percent agreement among studies that spanking can lead to such problems as delinquent and anti-social behavior in childhood along with aggression, criminal and anti-social behavior and spousal or child abuse as an adult.

"There's probably nothing else in child development that has 93 percent agreement in results," Straus said.

Five percent of people who have never been spanked hit their partners, versus 25 percent of those who were spanked frequently.

However, some 90 percent of U.S. parents spank toddlers, according to Straus.

The review being presented at the meeting are the first to look at the relationship of spanking to sexual behavior.

They found that spanking and other corporal punishment is associated with an increased probability of verbally and physically coercing a dating partner to have sex; risky sex such as premarital sex without using a condom; and masochistic sex such as spanking during sex.

There is a "dose response" at work here. "The more parents spank, the higher the probability of harmful side effects," Straus noted.

Of course, there's a similar dose response for smokers. But if someone reaches the age of 65 without developing lung cancer, it doesn't mean that smoking isn't harmful. It means the person was one of the lucky ones.

It's the same with spanking, Straus said. "If a person says, 'I was spanked, and I don't have any interest in bondage and discipline sex, that's correct, but it's not because spanking is OK, it's because they're one of the lucky ones."

And spanking a child once may be like picking up that first cigarette. "The trouble is, if you have a 2-year-old, you pretty soon decide you can't avoid it. The recidivism rate for whatever 'crime' you correct a 2-year-old for is about 50 percent in two hours."

"I've been researching corporal punishment for 30 years and, in the course of that time, the evidence has accumulated that it doesn't work any better than non-corporal punishment but has harmful side effects. I have come to the conclusion that parents should never, ever spank because, although it does work, it's no better than non-hitting methods that don't have harmful side effects. If there was an FDA for spanking, they'd say use an alternative that doesn't have harmful side effects."

As a submissive who's in to BDSM, I'd like to say I've never suffered from child abuse - and I certainly don't want to be cured! And whilst we're on the topic of what's 'normal', fantasies of being 'raped' are common amongst both men and women (up to 50% of the population have them) - which doesn't of course mean people want to be raped, just that a fantasy of giving up power is a common fantasy for a great number of people. And BDSM has a great deal to do with consensual power exchange.

I'd also encourage you to look at the statistics on the percentage of the population that's suffered from some kind of child abuse. I think you'll find it to be very high, so statistically it's not surprising that your friends who are in to BDSM have suffered child abuse... just as it's not surprising that many people who have blonde hair or like going to the cinema have been abused as children.

The line is between consent and non-consent, and people who partake in BDSM take this very seriously. If it's consensual, it's ok; if not, it's not. No one has the right to sit in judgement on another's sexual interests unless they hurt someone.

As a submissive, I'd like to say I've never suffered from child abuse - and I certainly don't want to be cured! And whilst we're on the topic of what's 'normal', fantasies of being 'raped' are common amongst both men and women (up to 50% of the population have them) - which doesn't of course mean people want to be raped, just that a fantasy of giving up power is a common fantasy for a great number of people. And BDSM has a great deal to do with consensual power exchange.

I'd also encourage you to look at the statistics on the percentage of the population that's suffered from some kind of child abuse. I think you'll find it to be very high, so statistically it's not surprising that your friends who are in to BDSM have suffered child abuse... just as it's not surprising that many people who have blonde hair or like going to the cinema have been abused as children.

The line is between consent and non-consent, and people who partake in BDSM take this very seriously. If it's consensual, it's ok; if not, it's not. No one has the right to sit in judgement on another's sexual interests unless they hurt someone.

BDSM is simply another aspect of sexual arousal, and if you want to understand why people get aroused by different things the best study I've read is 'The Erotic Mind' by Jack Morin. This book is the largest study I know of of peak erotic experiences, and what makes them so intense. It's a lot more complex than 'I was abused as a child, so I want to do this now.'

If you have a real interest in the causes of different people's eroticism, please read the work of someone who's dedicated his life to researching it, rather than trotting out the same old hackneyed misinformation.

These novels are a more modernized angle on what Frank Watson's "Chateau Noir" did in a Victorian (almost Steam Punk) manor. The theme of a woman's submission leading to empowerment. Similar to "The Story of O" -- which has always had an secret appeal for women, and was of course written by a woman as well. The ideas are also a great draw to male readers, who may not "get" that in the end it is the female who triumphs. She is where the power ultimately lies.

The L.A. Times and the NY Times are both writing about this godawful novel which of course will result in the book selling even more copies. I read some excerpts on the Jezebel site and LOL'd - atrociously bad writing and a cliche story with a lame "twist": the demure virgin and the bad boy spanker.

Male agression is to blame for most of the world's problems, past and present: We need to turn things around and have men submit to women - it's the only way to save humanity although I'm not sure it deserves to be saved.

Read Elise Sutton's writing on the subject of Femdom on her website that bears her name. (I can't include a link here since my comment will most likely be rejected as spam if I do).

I can't help but notice how similar some of the remarks in this thread are to those said about gay and lesbian people a generation ago. For some reason people need to believe that we're all alike sexually and that any deviation from the proscribed norm is, well, just plain deviant. Its like: okay, now we are all agreeing to accept that some of us are aroused by members of their own gender, we're no longer calling them sick, but that's it! All else must be a result of some abuse! And if these people say that they were never abused then it must be a repressed memory because, damn it, they're not like me and I'm normal, so there must be something wrong here!

Newsflash: There is a whole society of people who are aroused by power-exchange dynamics. We exist, we don't prefer our sex the same way that the rest of the population does and yet we come from the exact same array of good and bad-parenting scenarios as do the rest of the you. We are your grocer, your helpful nurse, your kid's best friend and your totally bland-behaving second-cousin. Exactly like the gay people of previous generations, we celebrate our proclivities in a life that is hidden from your eyes because we don't want to listen to you patiently explain to us that were just acting out some unrecognized childhood abuse trauma. Or fire us from our jobs. Or take away our kids.

To Aimee: It's lovely that some of your best friends are black, I mean gay, no — now it's kinky — but how is that anywhere approaching an acceptable sampling of the population? Join FetLife. Experience hundreds of thousands of people, from practically every country on the planet, frolicking about in pervy paradise. You'll start to notice that … they sound like everyone else! They have their successes and their failures, and they have a different flavor of sexual arousal than you do. We're a small percentage of the human family (we think — it's not like any reliable statistics exist on this subject), but we're not, not, not all abuse-victims. Seriously. Not even a significant minority of us, and believe me, the ones who are do not hide shyly in this community.

As for Mr. John Wilwerding, first you tell us that "this adult alternative sexual lifestyle is viewed by the vast majority of mental health professionals to originate from childhood abuse trauma", later you say that you're "OK" with "mutually consenting BDSM activity" (!) but then refer to kinksters as "victims" who are "forced completely unbiden (sic) to be distracted in their life with this need/preoccupation whether they enjoy it or not." (!!) Oh, and then we catch you whining (on a vanilla site!) that "As for myself, my BSSM (again, sic, but I'm intrigued as to what that stray "S" might stand for) shade is so grey the community hasn't offered me one player I feel happy with. …"

Really? Not one? Oh, I am so surprised. And you offer such an attractive package, too.

Submitted by Sexually abused and told I wasn't on April 2, 2012 - 11:51am

I must have insulted you and not meant to. Your comparison to the social acceptance to earlier discrimination of sexual orientation is understandable with sexual kink but the difference is orientation is nature, BDSM is a environmentaly created condition from chilhhood abuse, either deliberate or accidental.

The God's that decide on mental health illness, a few professionals in the mental health field that decide what is diagnosed as mental illness have just given up and decided to remove sadomasochism from the Bible of mental illness diagnosis, the DSM. The diagnosis wont' label sadomasochism unless it's preventing a person from functioning in their normal day to day activity from more than six months. This takes away the burden of being labled mentally ill with all the negative social stigma and allows people with sadomasochism to feel better about themselves and more "normal" in society. The other decision the mental health community did was to publically and professionally condem any form of child abuse, including hitting, and spanking in any manner. This is the compromise as a professional organization for both adult victims, fetish BDSM people, and children to protect both groups. So I'm not attacking people who enjoy this lifestyle. From what I understand even if adult victims who suffer from the effects of child abuse with emotional, and relationship issues recieve psychotherapy the sadomasochistic desires seldom leave them. My complaints were simply in what involvment I have had with BDSM groups my particular need for age play to find partners who enjoy that in the opposite role are few an far between and yet they are often found in family homes as mothers who are in denial of their own spanking fetish with sadistic spanking, who will not seek out group BDSM activity, but enstead chose a monogamous partner who will compliment their denied or accepted sadomasochism in their private intimacy, and often will take advantage of social acceptance of corporally punishing their children, some enjoying it and being motivated by it, and some not but knowing intuitivelly they are perhaps creating the same sadomasochim in their own children and believeing it is perfectly acceptable to do so! I have found the vast majority of women into sadism who are not embracing BDSM lifestyles socially, but only engaging in it with a union partner they are sexually intimate with, are also radically pro spanking of children. Each child then is beign exposed to the risk of having their own sexuality damaged and the cycle of abuse continues on. I realize it is dangerous to judge all BDSM adults as accepting of spanking their children, but many do. It would seem the professial psychological community has failed by their choice of simply condeming child corporal punishment, in that it is very reluctant to condem it as child punishment for potentially sexual damage reasons. This allows less social scrutiny of this form of abuse, since it's not considered sexual abuse, when indeed for most children it must be if they do develope a fetish from it. This sounds ridiculous I understand, as some of peoples fetishes originate not from direct abuse experience but from secondary exposure to it in sight, sound, etc, as young children. I have had psychotherapy for my masochistic desires and I had my repressed dissociated memories of my abuse made conscious to me with PTSD flashbacks that were very emotionally tramatic and painful. Still my fetish remains but I'm happier living with the truth than a lie, that sexual fetishes are natural heredity traits in people. I have had to give up persuing any contentment with my fetish now that I have been put on anticoagulant for the rest of my life and I must live with my masochism anyway. All because I was abused in childhood. For those feel their own abuse didn't harm them overly, and enjoy their adult BDDSM lifestyle I'm all for that but why support people who abuse children, and know some will grow up like myself feeling my sexuality was hijacked, not liking the distraction of never feeling sexually satisfied with vanilla sex and seeing how that is just a majory distraction in my life that would never had had to happen if any form of corporal punishment was banned or at least highly socially condemed in our present society. As of yet this is not so, as recent polls still reveal 70% of parents are still using corporal punishment, and most BDSM people are still in denial that their kinks came from some form of childhood abuse!

@Sexually abused and told I wasn't, I'm very sorry for what happened to you as a child. No one should have to suffer from that and I am glad you got help.

That being said, there is no psychological research to the effect that all BDSM stems from either primary or secondary exposure to childhood abuse, whether that abuse is psychological and physiological in nature. BDSM is not a popular area of research because the subject is so taboo, and as it isn't much discussed there is not a lot of research. I would like to know the source of your 70% statistic, as well as who participated in that research. There are several cultures in which it is entirely unforgivable to use corporal punishment on children and yet the BDSM community is still large and thriving.

One of the most important mantras of BDSM is "safe, sane, and consensual". Those who engage in sadomasochistic practices take special care to assure that everything is approved by both parties. There have been no correlational studies to determine the rate of corporal punishment among sadomasochistic parents, and even if there were there is no way to determine causality. If 70% of people still approve of corporal punishment today, how can you blame BDSM for it?

The rationale you are using seems to stem from a Freudian definition of sadomasochism, as he explained in his essay "A Child Is Being Beaten". This essay has been LARGELY discredited as an acceptable explanation for the desire to be beaten, without even going into the lack of scientific method and the data that led to his analysis.

If you choose not to indulge your masochistic desires and it works for you, that's your choice and there is nothing wrong with it. That being said, please stop telling the rest of us who choose to practice our preferred lifestyle that it was because of repressed exposure to childhood abuse, because for most of us, it is not. It is very rare that a sustained and overpowering sexual need for pain/to give pain or concerning control comes from childhood experience, as most psychologists and neuroscientists agree that our sexual desires (and behavior in general) as we age and pass adolescence match our genes, not our environmental upbringing.

1) And I apologize to you that my snarky-defensive reflex kicked in when I saw such stunningly insulting things said about the entire lifestyle with which I identify.

2) I'm also very sorry that you were a victim both of the original abuse in your childhood and what, in my opinion, constitutes later psychological abuse that led you to believe that your sexual urges are not innate, but, rather result only from that childhood abuse.

3) Just as an aside, it's a lot easier to read an argument that is broken into smaller paragraphs. And I say this because you make several strong points and I really want to understand where you're coming from.

4) From your first paragraph, addressed to me:

"Your comparison to the social acceptance to earlier discrimination of sexual orientation is understandable with sexual kink but the difference is orientation is nature, BDSM is a environmentaly created condition from chilhhood abuse, either deliberate or accidental."

Citations, please. And please also keep in mind the long list of mentally and psychologically healthy behaviors that were once thought deviant by the psychological community. I have seen this very point discussed in multiple forums and have never heard of any credible research as to whether kink is innate or learned behavior, but the consensus amongst the cognoscenti is that we're born with it, it may be hereditary or not, but that being kinky does not mean that one's family is not decisively vanilla.

5) Later, in your long paragraph, you appear to hinge your argument on these two statements:

"they are often found in family homes as mothers who are in denial of their own spanking fetish with sadistic spanking, who will not seek out group BDSM activity, but enstead chose a monogamous partner who will compliment their denied or accepted sadomasochism in their private intimacy, and often will take advantage of social acceptance of corporally punishing their children",

and,

"I have found the vast majority of women into sadism who are not embracing BDSM lifestyles socially, but only engaging in it with a union partner they are sexually intimate with, are also radically pro spanking of children."

Again, citations needed. Are you making these statements from your own experience only? When you say "They are often found. …", what are you quoting from? And when you say "I have found …", are you speaking as a clinical researcher and referring to documented case studies?

6) You continuously imply that the APA's condemnation of corporal punishment, both in schools and in homes, is somehow linked to their (what you characterize as almost grudging) removal of BDSM from the DSM, because you say: "This takes away the burden of being labled mentally ill with all the negative social stigma and allows people with sadomasochism to feel better about themselves and more 'normal' in society."

Ummm … ouch. Are we quite certain that your tendencies are as a bottom, Sir? Because you are capable of whipping off some exquisitely toppy zingers, there. Again, I would love to see documentation as to where these two things are historically or clinically related. This might be a good time to mention that I have been in Education for over twenty years and have been a champion of the non-punitive classroom, and that this is the first that I have heard of an association between the rise of the non-punitive movement and the ease-up on the deviancy dunce-cap application to kinksters by the APA.

7) Your quote: "I realize it is dangerous to judge all BDSM adults as accepting of spanking their children, but many do", is frankly insulting and non-professionally vague. "Many do"? Again, either state what scientifically valid research you are using to back up such an incendiary statement or please qualify it as coming from your lifetime observations only (the little kid in me want to shout at you to "take it back!"). Because I have so far found quite the opposite to be true, and this is a subject on which I have a lot of personal and professional interest, and so is guaranteed to perk up my ears whenever it emerges.

And, finally,

8) I will go out on a little of the sweet music that can only be found in pure scientific inquiry, hypothesis-formation, the establishment of viable theories and the subsequent empirical research.

"As Weinberg, et al. (1984) noted, the perspective that SM represented a pathological condition may have stemmed from the fact that clinical practitioners and researchers provided the early understanding of the subject: 'The traditional model generalizes to the whole of sadomasochism the activities and experiences of those persons most likely to come to the attention of the clinicians." (p388).

Subsequent researchers have adopted a less-negative perspective, viewing SM not as a symptom of mental illness but

performed by well-educated people (Breslow, Evans and Langley, 1985; Moser and Levitt, 1987),

with positive attitudes about themselves and their behaviors (Breslow, Evans and Langley, 1986; Spengler, 1977; for a comprehensive review, see Weinberg, 1994)."

(End quote.)

The paper continues on to say that the cited research focused on readers of SM magazines, patrons of gathering places such as clubs and bars, and people involved in conferences and workshops, rather than those who were seeking psychiatric evaluation. The paper's conclusion, based on the authors' research involving the physiological measurement of salivary testosterone and cortisol and "the psychological measures of relationship closeness before and after participating in SM activities", is that "SM, when performed consensually, has the potential to increase intimacy between participants."

A "relatively healthy social phenomenon performed by well-educated people with positive attitudes about themselves and their behaviors" that "has the potential to increase intimacy between participants" — wait, that's what our culture defines as "a good thing", no?

Submitted by Sexually abused and told I wasn't on April 2, 2012 - 9:39pm

I will share that my information is shared via my education while in psychotherapy by a well respected psychoanalyst with PhD and over 25 years experience. Dr. Florence Rosiello. I do trust her as her repuation and education far exceed the author/writer who wrote this article, Sari Cooper. My journey to understand my masochistic desires came late, I'd suffered with such compulisve/addictive desires of a specific nature most of my life. The one comment I recall that made perfect logical sense is that genetically the desire to inflict pain, physical and or mental or recieve it serves NO biological evolutionary purpose whatsoever that is a strong indication that the source of sadomasochism is environmental not genetic. One will never be able to use science to answer that question of linking child abuse and adult sadomasochistic fetishes. The last sad scientific study done in a carefully designed and conducted social experiement was done in the 80's in Oregon. I was shocked that as late a time as that professionals were still considering it "safe" to experiment with violence and children in the context of physical punishment!

My therapist at the time shared she found it rare and also her fellow collegues found it rare for people to seek out treatment for sadomasochims. She shared she had in her experience of practice one female who had sought help for her sadism.

I have met on various occasions since the advent of the internet women and also men who admitted practiced BDSM activities, strongly believed in the ritual practice of forced partial disrobment of a childs clothes and underclothes, who were in a capacity as a caregiver, either some type of related guardian, or parent role. They in detail described the intentional use of exposing the child to them as a strong means of humiliation prior to the ritual positioning of the child and then inflicting the pain of their blows to them as punishment. Some went so far as to share they were still childless but were anticipating this "duty" with great anticipation and enjoyment! Others would patently deny their enjoyment of it while praising their experiences of being whipped by a partner. Such cognitive dissonance is quite common to avoid a sexual abuse label. I won't do the work for you and you can convieniently discard my statements. The 70 % figure is out there just start looking in cyber as the studies are avialable.

I have met mothers online who had such sadomasochistic desires themselves, were looking for another female partner to satisfy their needs who NEVER consiously understood in defined terms they had a sadomasochistic fetish in themselves yet strongly believed it was normal and neccesary to spank their children, and never saw it motivating them with some subconcious or sadly for some even consious gratification for their unidentified sadistic fetish.

I will not trott out lots of defending studies, there are noted if you go look a few studies that have been done as survey type work where it has been found that those adults who share they were spanked as children have a greater incidence of sadomasochistic desires in their intimate sex lives. It certainly would seem to those with sadomasochistic fetishes that genetic propensities seem logical if parents had such fetishes and there offspring did also, but the environmental transmittion of sadomasochism is very logical if parents spanked and the offspring also spank. I also was troubled by the same doubts expressed by so many who enjoy their BDSM desires and accept them. It was explained to me by my therapist at the time that not all adults will recall there experiences of abuse, some as I said could have been traumatized by secondary exposures, and some where just to young to remember their trauma. For such individuals which it seems you are stating are in this catagory it is certainly logical that you would have no knowledge of abuse and so would only embrace it as a natural part of your sexuality, and find the issue of social acceptance in vanilla society the greatest challenge. I have been in the BDSM community, I've been fulfilled by some scening, but the generational transmittion of this sexual lifestyle by child abuse, for those of us who have trauma memories of it makes it impossible to accept the very low change regarding how parents are damaging their children's sexuality as a life long need by not doing more as unintended victims of this social disease. Lastly I will share that the most recent discoveries in human brain chemistry and brain scans are already begining to offer real scientific evidence of brain chemistry changes from the experience of child corporal punishment. It is still in early stages of study but I'm convinced such research will unequivicalably produce the solid evidence that corporal punishment is changing in negative ways human brain structure. Human sexuality I belive will be a part of that evidence in the future. Enjoy your kink, but please don't run from the debate about corporal punishment being harmless for children just to validate your own lifestyle as normal and safe. Of course one should accept themselves as they are but it need not sacrifice future children in the process.

Submitted by Sexually abused and told I wasn't on April 2, 2012 - 11:28pm

One last thought I'll share is that I once believed the misinformation about origins of sadomasochism. The social groups all believed it was a natural part of themsleves, just a minority. When I met my first online dominant sadistic woman I greived myself that I had for most of my life denied my masochistic desire in fear and shame. I got my wife involved we played some, played in small married couple groups or with her supervisioin played with a dominant partner or two! But I sought help for it since my initial attempt to in real life experience my desires ended in rejection. She was a psychiatric nurse, her husband a bitter man who remarried to her after his first wife had divoriced him for his bondage desires. The woman had initially wanted to help me as I was a kink virgin at the time. I learned she had believed she developed her own sadistic desires at the hands of closely being exposed to in the classroom paddlings of a fellow classmate by a teacher. I could sense by her sharing it had been very tramatic for her. Anyway we met as couples and enjoyed the exchange but I was nervous and fearful of her since she had shared her traumatic memories. I wasn't sure I would be safe with her and begged for just a slow bit of time to get to know her better and ask to start slow without intense pain but slight instead. She promtly rejected me as she said my hesitance was comming from me only playing her. My fear had been real but she thought I was dishonest. It hurt me enough having anticipated my first experience that I was depressed for a week. My wife intervened for me and I tried to rescue the situation by meeting alone with her husband once, but she would not see me or speak to me again. And this comming from someone who was a trained psych nurse, who understood here own needs were developed by abuse she witnessed as a child in school. It was then I found a trusted therapist and started to unravel the lies and or misconceptions about this compulsive desire. I can recall to this day the first time this masochistic desire became so powerful it made me act out in solo a masochistic postioning for a spanking in a school bathroom. I felt someone had taken over my body and mind. I had no concept of sexuality or sex at the time as I was only 9 years old in 5th grade! I had no idea what made me do this, only it was not natural, and if anyone discovered my desire I would be shamed and ridiculed. I have met BDSM adults who strongly condem child corporal punishment and I have met BDSM adults who belive it is absolutely neccessary to spank their children, meanwhile divoricing it from their own sexual sadomasochism activity. That is a consumate denial response. I belive the issue of overt genital contact pedophilia as a horrific and criminal act is so frightening a thought for most BDSM adults along with the social acceptable license to act by caregiving parents to have access to their childs bodies for legitimate needs of dresssing, hygiene,and medical care that they must deny any concept of sexual abuse of children could be possible living with this set of sexual desires. Indeed I belive it is neccessary for organized lifestylers to go out of their way to legitimize their needs as personal choices with harmless consequences, either not having any involvment with children or making certain all social forces agree with them that a ritualized forced act of humiliation and pain infliction upon ones own child for punishment value is a completely separate experience than one for sadistic value. The social taboo's are too powerful to admit one could exist with the other simultaneously. I find the psychological discoveries and media discussions of this topic change a great deal from year to year, and citing something three years old or older is outdated by new information. I will share one media article link that points out overt deliberatly inflicted sexual abuse of young males by adult women. It discusses some of the negative side effects in these adult victims as men. It mentions masochism which is well documented and published if one is willing to go look. That one could recall as a child being sexually aroused though at the time not understand and identify it as such, by a mothers ritual order to come to her, have her slowly undress and expose the child's genitals to her with a deliberate humiliation, all the while hiding her own non verbal body language of her pleasure found in her eyes, in doing so behind a facade of stern solemness. One can easily begin to understand a sexual abuse is occuring in a very covert manner, even innocently if they are in complete denial of their own kink or don't have this kink themselves, which the psychological community is afraid to reveal to the majority population of corporal punishment approving parents and a BDSM community that must keep its own interests of preserving their own hard won battles for sexual acceptance. It is the child and there own sexuality that remains sacrificed for the preservation of sexual freedom and the right to use corporal punshment on children. Here is the link, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/sexually-abused-males-silent-confused-social-rules-maculinity/story?id=14993462

The Flavour of Erotica... I love that metaphor liking the flavours of icecream to the sexual experiments of dominance and submission. I dont really understand why we as a society need to suppress and create taboos about of blatantly existing emotions in cases where no harm is done to anyone (at least no one who doesnt want to be haha).

A great and useful comment here from another site--especially cause that one poor gal is soooo hung up on spanking children leading to--well according to her practically everything:

"I think the author and everyone is overthinking this one by a long shot. It's possible that the only reason today's young American women think spanking is sexy is because they were raised by parents who were utterly terrified to lay a hand on them. As a result, spanking seems utterly foreign, unknown, dangerous, transgressive and steamy instead of just what it is: a pain in the ass."

My therapist told me the vast majority of psych professionals believe a spanking fetish and other fetishes develope in children during a traumatic experience, that being defined that the child is sensing and perceiving enough fear and danger that they believe they are about to be seriousl harmed or killed.

This experience may not be remembered by the victim because it was blocked out with repression, they may have to protect the "good" image of the person that spanked them so as to not hate them living with a denial of their childhood trauma also! then there is the case were the victim was traumatized indirectly by witnessing another child being threated or experiencing the trauma of spanking, and this could be visual or auditorial. There is also the possibility for the child being too young when the trauma occured to have a memory of the trauma but later express and exhibit the spanking fetish in their sexuality.

All reasons that explain and don't discredit that spanking fetishes are the result of child abuse.

Here is another entry comment on the child abuse web site where I posted my story. This one posted by someone who works with severe sexually abuse victims themselves, but is scared by his own childhood abuse from a spanking mother.

"Jan 22, 2012
I have so many fetishes.
by: Mark

The ritual discipline dished out by my mother has left me so many sexual fetishes. She was a very controlling woman who believed in very strict discipline. My father never ever laid a hand on me or played any part in my upbringing. She also terrorised him for over 50 years before she died last novemeber. My mother spanked me a lot. At the very least it was on my bare behind and at some point I would always be naked.there were times when she really thrashed me with a bamboo cane, but usually she used her slipper or a wooden hairbrush.I started from about the age of ten having sexual feelings about my discipline. At that age I hadn't got a clue what was happening or what these feelings were. I just knew that I found them pleasurable and that I shouldn't tell anybody else.I can trace my early fetishes to mother's strict house rules. Initially I got very excited by feet, being made by mother to take of my shoes and socks, she absolutely did not allow outdoor shoes in the house, we did have carpets.So age 10 I to get excited by this. Believe me if she ever caught me in the house in shoes she really would whip me. Even to this day I cannot walk into my house without taking my shoes off. I also started to get excited about being disciplined and sent to bed early. When I got spanked I always got sent to bed early.she always punished me in the sitting room and after she had spanked she always ritualistically had me fetch my pjs and put them on in front of anyone who was there. Sometimes I would get stripped off before I got spanked if so afterwards she would make me walk to our downstairs airing cupboard and fetch my pjs come back and put them on, to this day I can still feel the humiliation of those intense moments.for me being sent to bed early, sometimes very early was not a punishment but a relief. From around 11 I pleasured myself continually when I was sent to bed. When mother found the tell tale marks on my pjs she would whip me again.and so it went round in that inevitable pavlovian cycle.Professionally I worked in a very senior capacity with the victims of serious sexual abuse.in reality this was mothers and their children, I will say that my experiences pale at the side of some poor peoples experiences. But that doesn't diminish the impact that my experiences have had on my life.during lovemaking I am unable to perform without having erotic thoughts about spankings etc.My mother died last november and I didn't feel a thing. I've not grieved and I don't need to.I don't miss her. But her legacy is much more than that."

Those who honestly are not in denial but believe their own spankig fetish is some genetic gift do a serious diservice to the victims of this mild form of a sexual addiction from trauma. You give parents the ingnorant bliss necessary to continue abusing children!

I'm not trying to douse BDSM community fun, for those that only enjoy this lifestyle with other consenting adults I say congratulations. But if the reason to defend sadomasochism as not originiating from some child corporal punishment trauma, directly, or indirectly so they can defend as a parent there kink with a sadomasochistic fetish AND then chose to use corporal punshment on their child(ren) and deny their kink is not influencing the manner in which they spank is a lie, a deep psychological denial. The professional psychological community condems corporal punishment of children for it's harm to them.

I have many more commentors who live with a spanking fetish and would rather not to share but it seems readers here won't believe it anyway. Instead I will share two real life examples where the parent had a spanking fetish and it was motivating them to corporally punish their children and getting caught is a vary rare event to prove it, but it happens in the privacy of homes very commonly. Almost catagorically parents would never admit their is any connection. Yet I offer two examples, the first a anti child abuse advocate who after hearing my story share hers how she secretely learned her parents has a sadomasochistic fetish kink and how it modeled how the mother corporally punished her brother.

"I'm often asked this question. Each time I attempt to answer it, or address the issue of spanking as an inappropriate form of discipline, I'm barraged by a flurry of comments from people who adamantly believe in spanking and who invariably use themselves as the reasoning behind their belief: "I was spanked as a child and I turned out just fine" is the typical statement offered for their belief.

"Just fine" is a subjective phrase. The fact that a person maintained a high grade-point average in school, excelled in sports, and/or holds a blue-collar job does not speak to the only issues at stake when this topic is broached.

I recently had one comment contributor who had the audacity to imply that because life itself is filled with pain, such as that in the workplace and in relationships, etc., that spanking a child in childhood will help them better deal with that kind of future pain. Absurd! This assertion has no basis in fact. Research into the emotional effects of spanking children continues to show that the negative far outweighs any positive (see What Spanking Really Teaches). But the overwhelming majority still defend this form of discipline as their right, even as their duty. If parents truly understood what the price of spanking can be for their child, they wouldn't even consider spanking an option.

Among professionals, it is generally understood that spanking CAN indeed create a fetish for it. I'm not suggesting that all children who are spanked will grow up wanting to be spanked for sexual purposes. Nor am I suggesting that only those who were spanked will grow up with this fetish; the issue is far more complex than to simply say one or the other. But spanking can definitely leave a child with sexual imprinting for a variety of reasons.

When a child experiences fear or anxiety, the physical sensations he or she feels during that time are very close to those of sexual feelings. The brain can easily confuse the two. When the child is a pubescent adolescent, this is even more pronounced. With young males, it is perfectly natural to experience an erection when they are scared, anxious or nervous. Young females can also experience what can be misinterpreted as arousal during such times. What can be even more confusing and disturbing to the young person is when their bodies betray them further by experiencing an involuntary orgasm. When a child grows up believing that love hurts or must be in some way painful for it to actually BE love, that child may enter into adulthood looking for painful relationships. In combination with the former, this is a recipe for creating a fetish.

An even more insidious assertion is that some parents—definitely not ALL parents-I would never suggest that-but certainly some—use ritualistic and ceremonious lead-ups to spankings, and then administer a spanking to their child in order to fulfill their own sexual desires, and then hide behind their right to use spanking for disciplinary purposes. I know this statement will outrage many, but allow me to elaborate using my own childhood as an example.

My mother not only made us pull down our pants before she took a belt to us kids, she often made us strip down bare. She also used bondage on at least one of my brother's. One particular incident that will be forever etched in my mind was when she was about to administer her version of discipline on my youngest brother. She pulled out a round end table and ordered him to strip down bare. She then tied his hands and legs to the legs of that table. She took the belt to his naked body, beating him till he was black and blue and had welts all over his back, legs and buttocks. She beat him until he was so hoarse from screaming, his screams were inaudible. My brother was 8, going on 9 years old. I was 11, going on 12. The emotional turmoil was overwhelming. I almost went crazy that day. I used a piece of clothing that I had just taken down from the outside clothesline to bite down on in order to stifle my own screams of helplessness and rage. Even today as I write this article, at 50 years of age, almost four decades after this affront took place, I can still hear my brother's screams. I can't even begin to go into the affects this, and other incidents of so-called discipline at the hands of my sick and twisted mother, had on my brother, indeed, on every one of us five kids. The information pages on this site are filled with those effects.

Less than a year after this insanely disturbing incident, I was making my parents' bed, as was my job during that particular week. As I slipped my hands under the mattress to tuck in the sheet on my mother's side of the bed, my fingertips felt what I knew were the pages of a magazine. I was curious about what my mother might hide under her side of the bed; and knowing that neither one of my parents would be home for hours yet, I decided it was safe to pull that magazine out from its place of refuge.

At first, I didn't know what to make of what was on the front cover. I had never before seen or even heard of pornography, let alone what was being depicted in the photograph I was ogling. It was a glossy photo of a woman crawling on all fours, clad only in a leather bodice and what appeared to be a spiked dog collar with a leash affixed to the top. Her facial expression revealed a woman experiencing something between agony and ecstasy. A man dressed in leather shorts, leather T-shirt and a leather mask that completely covered his face and head except for holes for him to see and breathe was leading this woman by the leash on her collar.

I flipped through the pages, and then let the magazine open naturally. I landed on a page that was dog-eared. Bile rose up into my throat. The photo on that page was depicting the same bondage scene that my mother had "played out" as discipline on my brother. My heart was racing. I quickly referred back to the front cover. The date of issue was the month before she had tied my brother to the round table. I was dizzy with confusion. Dizzy about what all this meant. But I was also gripped by a need to understand what it was I was really looking at.

As I read the accompanying article, I began to comprehend the magnitude of what I had in my hands: My mother had enacted what was depicted on that magazine page for her own sexual gratification, all under the guise of discipline. I wanted to be sick. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. But the burning question that kept running through my mind kept me from fleeing from what I knew in my heart: Was that incident with my brother the only incident, or had she used all of us kids for her own demented sexual pleasure?

I knew that getting caught rummaging through any of my parents' personal belongings would have dire consequences, but I was struck with an overpowering urge to seek out more evidence. I didn't know what I would do with that evidence, but I had to know more.

I rifled through the clothes closet, being ever so careful to keep everything in its proper place so as not to draw suspicions. At the very back of the shelf, I could see a stack of magazines. I ran to the kitchen to get a chair, hoping on hope that my siblings wouldn't see me and want to know what I needed a chair for when I was supposed to be making my mother and father's bed. There was the very real danger of being tattled on. Luckily, the kitchen was deserted, but I still wanted a plan in case one of my brothers or sisters saw. I picked up a dust cloth to take with me to the bedroom, and made sure to dust that shelf before reaching up for more evidence. It now wouldn't be a lie when I told anyone that I needed the chair in order to dust all the surfaces in my parents' bedroom.

Playgirl seemed to be my mother's magazine of choice, but there were a couple of other titles, titles that pictured hard-core bondage and sexuality. Each issue had dog-eared pages, which is where I focused my attention. My whole body was shaking as I leafed through article after article, picture after picture that clearly illustrated my mother's sexual preferences, her fetishes, and mostly, that she had used all of us kids in one way or another to stage the very scenes portrayed among the pages of those magazines.

Yes, I recognize that my mother is perhaps an extreme example, but I do not believe hers is an uncommon one. When a parent uses rituals and ceremony, such as making a child bare themselves and thus inflict unbearable humiliation as part of a spanking, especially as the child gets older, I have to ask the true purpose behind such actions. I have to question if the actions are about discipline, or if they are about something far more sinister. Many child abuse stories on this site clearly point towards this disturbing assertion.

Discipline does not have to be synonymous with spanking. Discipline is teaching a child right from wrong. Effective discipline incorporates natural and logical consequences for inappropriate behaviour. It is a myth that parents must spank in order to discipline their child.

As long as society as a whole continues to accept that spanking is an appropriate form of discipline, children will continue to be put at risk for emotional abuse, physical abuse, and yes, even sexual abuse at the hands of the very people in charge of protecting them, including their mothers.

This second story is right out of a Florida newspaper last year! It is the rare kink parent getting caught abusing children and being foolish enough to share it with another kink adult by cell phone pic and computer. Both examples of how defending the idea that kink is not born of childhood abuse trauma allows some parents living with their kink to continue safely engaging in it with an adult partner but also criminally with a child yet rarely getting caught in the privacy of their own home, as corporal punishment is socially accepted yet so it's an easy cover for sexual abuse, actualy, sexual incest, without sex contact.

Investigators: Polk deputy tied naked children to desk, beat them with paddle

Robin Leigh Pagoria, 45, faces child abuse, child pornography charges. Pagoria
has been a Polk County detention deputy for almost six years. (Polk County
Sheriff's Office / May 26, 2011)

By Jeff Weiner, Orlando Sentinel

5:25 p.m. EDT, May 26, 2011Investigators say a Polk County sheriff's detention
deputy filmed herself strapping naked children to a desk and whipping them
brutally, then sent the videos to a boyfriend she met on a fetish website.

On Tuesday, 45-year-old Robin Leigh Pagoria was charged with aggravated child
abuse, production of child pornography, promotion of child pornography and
possession of child pornography.
According to an arrest report, the two children, described only as girls between
the ages of 10 and 18, described in graphic detail multiple whipping sessions.

Investigators say Pagoria cut the legs off one end of the desk she used for the
whippings. To keep them from moving, she handcuffed the children's arms and tied
their ankles to the desk, deputies said.
The girls told investigators that Pagoria beat them with a leather sex paddle
she'd bought online. The victims believed they were being punished — one said
she was hit 50 times for being "disrespectful"
Detectives say Pagoria recorded the beatings on her cell phone, uploading them
to the Internet so her online boyfriend could watch.
When interviewed by investigators, reports state that Pagoria explained that she
used to spank the girls, but "the spankings had not improved their behavior."

She switched to the table and handcuffs after "she decided she needed to do
something that would embarrass them so they would learn not to break the rules
again," the report states.

Investigators say Pagoria claimed she videotaped the sessions so she could
review and "'fine tune' her technique" — leading her to modify the table, and to
put a delay between blows for "maximum burn."
After the whippings, Pagoria explained that the girls were forced to stand naked
in the corner "so that they could reflect on what they had done wrong,"
according to the report.

Deputies say Pagoria later admitted to having a lifelong spanking fetish, and to
meeting her boyfriend on SpankFinders.com. Officials said the boyfriend, who
lives in another state, is also under investigation.

Investigators said they found evidence of two videos on Pagoria's phone. In
both, deputies said the victims' genitals and buttocks were the clear "focal
point."

According to the Sheriff's Office, the videos were about 10 minutes long, and
showed the children suffered "substantial" wounds. They could be heard screaming
in the videos, investigators said.

The victims names were redacted from arresting documents, it's not clear how or
why Pagoria had access to them. However, officials said it was not through her
employment with the Sheriff's Office.

Officials said Pagoria, a deputy for nearly six years, resigned Tuesday, in lieu
of being fired.

As much as anything can be psychological fact, it's been shown time and time again that you are highly unlikely to repress negative memories for extended periods of time. It's a Freudian concept that has been largely discredited in modern clinical psychology, and it's also been replicated in highly credited studies that your genes play a significantly stronger role in who you are and what you like as an adult than your environment. Children are highly resilient and are much more likely to resolve any childhood traumas during adolescence rather than carry things with them into adulthood. Traumas very rarely result in the fetishization of the trauma; that is a Freudian notion which almost all clinical psychologists will refute.

There may not be much in the way of scientific surveys about this, but there have been some case studies pointing to childhood spankings or whippings as the origin of sadomasochism (albeit not the exclusive origin). For starters, there's the research of Richard von Krafft-Ebing.

This link was recently portrayed in movie about Karl Jung and one of his patients. In this scene she reveals childhood corporal punishment roots to her sexual problems as an adult. Be
advised it's a pretty intense and explicit scene:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmq1af_sf-r-1_music

This movie was actually based on a real-life case, though I'm sure they took a lot of creative liberties. Here's a similar case without the Hollywood treatment from "Prone to Violence,"
by Erin Pizzey and Jeff Shapiro (1982), which I found cited in a great book by
Philip Greven called "Spare the Child" (available on Google books):

*** Olga was born in Scotland. Her grandfather was a Bible-thumping Puritan
bigot. The family lived in a small village, and Olga's mother was the only girl
in a large family of boys. The beatings, always for religious reasons, did not
spare her. The leather strap hung behind the door, both at home and at school.
By the time she attended school, she was well used to the pain of it across her
legs and buttocks.

Olga too, was regularly beaten in this God-fearing family. And she does remember
the first moments when pain evolved into pleasure. She was five, she thinks, and
her mother removed her knickers and made her bend over her knee. She had not
done anything very bad, so she was being smacked by hand, rather than strapped
with the tawse. As usual, she felt a tremendous sense of fear and anxiety before
bending over, but the difference this time was that as the pain in its crescendo
reached its highest pitch, she suddenly felt a warm surge of tingling pleasure
suffusing her whole body.

Olga was amazed and dreadfully embarrassed. Soon she began to look for that
pleasure in further beatings. So she would definitely provoke her mother, and
that was not difficult. She would fight at school until they whipped her and
blood ran down her legs. 'The Devil's in her,' the teachers would tell her
mother. . .

Jean-Jacques Rousseau "Confessions" has probably the most often cited first-hand account. More contemporarily, there's also a very moving open letter to a pro-spanking preacher by Beth Fenimore that can be read at http://cdugan0.tripod.com/RoyLessinOpenLetter.html

Anyone who feels the need to dominate or be subjugate by another human to get off "sexually" has issues. You don't have to have a PhD or have read a lot of studies to know this fact. D/s relationships are very similar to "prostitute/pimp" relationships, both are pathological as hell; in fact, it is the natural "sexual" progression of prostitutes to eventually have BDSM as part of their professional and personal "sexual" repertoire. Modern psychology is working hard to lift the "deviant" label from any and all sexual practices. I find it interesting that the author disparagingly refers to sexual relationships outside the BDSM lifestyle as "vanilla"; when in fact, many BDSM relationships rarely involve sex. So are we not really comparing apples to oranges most of the times when it comes describing BDSM as sex? Look! I have been to a dungeon and session with a submissive several times, it was interesting, fun and therapeutic at the time because I had recently broken up with a girlfriend and had issues of anger and hurt, but once those feelings were fully processed I found being overtly dominate and demeaning to a woman stupid, unnecessary and unhealthy to me mentally. Many in the BDSM community are acting out because they are going through a dark period in their life and once that period has passed the need to be part of that lifestyle ceases.

Where people's need/desire for bdsm comes from is not so relevant IMHO. Mine grew from early childhood (5 yr old) mild abuse from a 17 year old son of family friends who would take me into a dark place and touch me and then make me touch him. From there cyberspace did the rest - a world of f$@d up fetishists at ones finger tips awoke that dark secret naughty feeling again.

The point is that this kind of power play inhibits healthy relationships. I have always attracted would be doms, even if they don't label themselves as such, but just like the books of John Norman or other dysfunctional models of relating between the sexes.

I long for a mutually respectful, open, loving relationship. But can only get turned on by f$&@d up power plays. Healthy is not possible when one party needs to dominate and the other needs to submit. Dependency always creates resentment in the end. That's why women eventually revolted in the 60's and 70's against the societal form od dominance, and why slavery is so universally vilified as immoral and wrong. Why? Because it is not right or healthy for someone to be subjugated. it creates destructive dynamics. Bdsm is not just about play. It is about people who have distorted views of relationships perpetuating their internal scars by manifesting them irl.

It might be thrilling for a while, and erotic, but believe me, after some years it is excruciating and untenable. In the end, I hated each of my Dom partners. And that's not because they were "bad" doms. They loved me and it was so screwed up. I have been in the scene, and have never seen a healthy Dom sub relationship. It's like looking into some sort of warped nightmarish version of reality. It is not harmless. And so boring to be bossed about all the time! Subs rise up and use your heads! FFs - anyone who characterises this as something like flavours of icecream is disingenuous at best and harmfully perpetuating the nightmarish abuse of people at worst. And clearly has issues of their own that they seek to justify.

I Find It Difficult To Understand Why There Is So Much Talk About 50 Shades Of Grey.
To Me If You Are Reading This Book You Have No Idea About Reality And Seek This From The Book.
This Behaviour Goes On The Majority Of The Time By Consenting Adults Who Understand What Their Needs Are Without Having To Read A Book About It !
This Is 2012 Not The 18th Century !!!!!!!!

I'd like to add here that I am a sub and I am proud of my role. I am under my master's control at home only and we have a contract somewhat similar to what is described in the book. There is sweet delight in knowing that I am pleasing my master by surrendering totally to him. I have complete trust in him. He has taken me to my limits and it is at those time of reaching my limits that I have total control of him! As soon as I say my Safeword, we are done! We indulge in this lifestyle because it's pleasure some to both of us. There is definitely pleasure in receiving pain if the right balance is given. I have experienced some of my best orgasms after doing a scene with my master who is also my husband. I'd like to point out that my master was never abused as a child and has the desire to inflict pain on me because of that. I don't believe there is any correlation between the two.

Your article is the best I have ever read on the subject matter for BDSM! How refreshing and do wish this article could be posted in many other magazines to inform people who are not into the lifestyle that the people who enjoy it are not all nuts!!! I get very tired of the negativity that is spread about BDSM especially since it is not widely accepted here in the U.S. People out of country widely accept this lifestyle.

I am a Domme/Switch and started later in my life at the age of 45. Normal everyday sex was always so boring to me until a gentleman introduced me into the lifestyle. We had been dating for a few months then he typed up a session where I topped him/Domme and thought it was really strange took me awhile after he left to go through my thoughts but while participating in it found it very exciting and my heart was racing! Long story short I loved the lifestyle so much that I started a BDSM Dating website called wealthybdsmdating.com. It's not really for the upscale only as I feel wealth comes in many forms not just money but I do know that may deter some people from joining.